"I am endlessly fascinated by South African small town buildings, shops and general dealer stores, especially in the Western Cape and Karoo.”

In the early 1970's I began to record the shop-fronts, corner cafe's, bioscopes and general dealer stores in my hometown Worcester with my 35mm camera, fearing they may soon disappear. The supermarket was coming to town. Television was still to make its presence felt. I wanted to hold onto the memory.

Trying to establish my voice as a painter and searching for a subject I realised that these ordinary buildings that I had grown up with meshed with my idea of doing something essentially South African. This idea clarified after my first overseas trip to Europe in 1974. On my return to Cape Town, I realized how different and extraordinary the local scene was. Influenced by the photo-realism movement at the time, I began to use my photographs as a subject for my deadpan realist works.

I try and create paintings that have an intensity about them. I am told my images seem frozen, eerie, surreal. What makes them so is the absence of living beings which is deliberate and draws attention to the buildings themselves. These facades become a kind of portrait. I want the viewer to concentrate on the building’s detail, advertising and lettering. The strong light, casting shadow, texture and pattern over the the structure, that is so typical of the Western Cape is emphasized.

I comment on a particular kind of building which expresses something of the people who created it or who live and work in it, but who, themselves, are not conscious of the image which it projects.

Over the years my style of painting has loosened up, with more emphasis on brushstrokes and paint texture, as opposed to my earlier work which tended to be harder and flatter and more hyper-realistic - I still remain a committed realist. This for me, the only approach that could convey the message I wanted to put across. With realism, you have to be calculated - you can't just work from the heart or the imagination - because the weight of every element counts. My aim is to create paintings that comment about a certain place that existed at a specific and unique moment in time".

About the Artist...

John Kramer was born in Worcester, Western Cape in 1946. At school he received tuition at the Hugo Naude Art Centre, Worcester and majored in painting at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. In 1968 he won the Michaelis prize for best student work. He holds a diploma in Fine Art.

In 1970 he joined the South African Museum where he was head of the Exhibitions division for many years. During his museum career he designed and, with his team, built many displays and exhibitions including the Whale Well. He also had the opportunity to visit most major museums and galleries in Canada, USA, Israel, Paris and London. Although he had a full-time job he continued to paint at night and weekends and participated in many group shows. In the 1980s he had two successful sell-out one-man exhibitions at the SAAA. In 1996 he was invited to participate in Kunst uit Zuid-Africa at the Cultureel Centrum, Mechelen, Belguim and in 1997 Freedom Flight in the Westfries Museum, Hoorn, Netherlands. Other group shows include Contemporary South African Art 1985-1995 from the South African National Gallery Permanent Collection (1996) and Art into Architecture - South African National Gallery (1997).

Since 2002 he has pursued a full-time painting career. His work is represented in many private, corporate and public collections, including the Iziko- South African National Gallery, Durban Art Gallery and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum, Port Elizabeth.

Older brother of the famous singer/songwriter, David Kramer. He is married and has two sons and lives in Cape Town, South Africa

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